


rosemary and time

by layersofsilence



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Happy Steve Bingo, M/M, Rooftop/Indoor Gardening for Novices, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, a tragic tale of two idiots, just so we're clear on how fluffy this is, nat and sam are done with their shit, steve and bucky are human disasters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 09:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16741816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layersofsilence/pseuds/layersofsilence
Summary: How do you feel about dragging James and Steve into a date?Sam chuckles, and then checks over his shoulder; Steve is by the door fending off a customer.I feel very positively about that, he replies.We’re closing up now, i’ll ttylHe puts the phone down to get back to the backroom, but not before a last message comes onto his screen:Sure thing, accompanied by a;)in which: steve and bucky are absolute disasters, and sam and nat bond over managing them. for happy steve bingo 2018





	rosemary and time

**Author's Note:**

> vex and i got the same prompt for the happy steve bingo: rooftop/indoor gardening. they're not in the same 'verse but we decided to post them together anyway because we wrote them alongside each other :') you can check hers out [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16741678)

Nat’s painting her nails and absently paying attention to the television when Bucky comes home from the nursery. He closes the door with a kick and leans back against it with a tote bag hanging from his wrist and the rest of his arm keeping more seedlings tucked close, a beatific smile on his face, tipping his head upwards to stare at, from what Nat can tell, absolutely nothing. He couldn’t make it more obvious that he’s met someone if he waved a banner and sang it.

“Hmm,” Nat says. On screen, a baby’s carriage begins to tip precariously down a set of stairs. Bucky scrunches his nose up at her. “Interesting.”

“You would think so,” Bucky mutters, but he’s still trying to battle down a smile.

“Well?” Nat asks finally, when Bucky pushes himself off the door and starts putting down his bounty without any sign of elaborating on his new crush. “Who?”

“His name’s Steve,” Bucky says, and his voice is almost shy when he says it. “He works at the nursery,” he adds when Nat raises an eyebrow at him. “He knows so _much_ about plants –”

“I’d hope so, if he works at a nursery,” Nat mutters. Bucky flicks her shoulder as he sits down beside her, dumping the tote bag that he’d borrowed from her on the ground within her reach.

“He was really helpful,” Bucky says, mildly scolding. “He gave me some interesting ideas on getting started, and recommended which herbs we should start out with, and just –” He cuts himself off with a sigh.

“I’d still hope so, since he _works at a nursery_ ,” Nat says. Bucky kicks her for her trouble, sighs again. “How long did you talk for?” she asks as she slowly begins to clear her tote and throw the small things he’d left in there at him.

“Pretty much the whole time I was there,” Bucky confesses, dodging a pencil. “So, forty minutes? He was nice,” he says, and this time there is definite shyness in his voice. It sets Nat on edge, just a little, and she tears her attention away from the pamphlets and crumpled paper at the bottom of her bag.

“What’s this?” she asks, pulling out the larger piece of paper. It has vaguely legible scribbles on it, but Bucky snatches it out of her hand before she can decode it.

“They’re book recommendations,” he says, cradling the paper like it’s a precious baby. “Indoor gardening for beginners. He thought I might find some of them helpful.”

“I see,” Natasha says. “And what was his name, this paragon of knowledge?” she asks carefully. Bucky rolls his eyes in a way that accuses her of wanting to stalk him online, which, to be fair, she has to confess to herself that she has every intention of doing. She won’t admit it out loud, though.

“Steve,” Bucky says. Nat glares at him, and he relents. “Steve Rogers. Don’t stalk yet, though. I don’t even know if we’re going to meet again.”

“Oh, I think you are,” Natasha says, and shrugs at the cautious, hopeful look that Bucky shoots her. “Intuition. Or the fact that I know you, and I know you are already planning another, technically unnecessarily trip to the nursery.”

“That’s – that’s rude,” Bucky mutters. “Don’t call me out like that.”

Natasha snorts at him. “At least try to get something I can use next time,” she says.

“I got parsley!” Bucky protests.

“Not good enough,” Natasha tells him. “I am Russian; I want dill and _garlic_. I want _potatoes_.”

“We don’t have the space for potatoes,” Bucky says, for what must be the millionth time. Nat just rolls her eyes and goes back to excavating her borrowed bag. Anything is space if they try hard enough.

“Aw,” she says, once she’s cleared away all the pamphlets to find money lurking at the bottom of the bag. Because of course it would find its way right down below everything else. “For me?” she asks, pulling the notes out.

Bucky looks up from his phone – where, Nat notices, he’s looking up a certain nursery’s opening hours – and frowns at the money Nat’s holding. “That’s not right,” he says. Frowns harder. “Is that a twenty?”

“Yep,” Nat says.

“But I _gave_ him a –” Bucky drops his phone and lunges over to Nat’s side of the couch, snatching at the notes: one twenty, one ten, and two one-dollar bills. When Bucky looks up again he has pure, unmitigated panic on his face, which would be funny if it wasn’t so alarming. “I gave him two twenties,” he says. “My change was meant to be twelve dollars!”

“Twelve dollars and forty-three cents?” Nat asks, extracting said forty-three cents from her bag.

“Yeah, I –” Bucky grabs the receipt again, fumbling uncharacteristically as he tries to open it one-handed. “Yeah, that’s what it says here. I paid forty, he gave back twelve forty-three, I don’t – how much do you have there –?”

Nat looks through her bag one more time, half-hoping that it will yield more money. “Thirty-two dollars and forty-three cents,” she announces with finality. Bucky slumps, and she raises an eyebrow at him. “Did your Steve Rogers miscount some money for you?”

“No,” Bucky says miserably. “The receipt still says I should’ve – and he didn’t say anything about it – and why would he – I mean, I don’t know him, we don’t know each other –”

“So it was an accident,” Nat says, mostly to put Bucky out of his misery.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and leans desolately into the nearest supportive pillow, which turns out to be Nat’s knees. Because she is a good friend and has a decently high pain tolerance she does not complain about the way his chin digs into her kneecap.

Instead, she reaches out to stroke his hair. “It will be okay,” she says. 

“I can’t just enjoy the free plants,” Bucky says.

“The eight dollar plants,” Nat corrects.

“I can’t. What if he gets fired for this? What if he thinks I stole from him?” Bucky sits up, ramrod-straight. “Nat, I can’t let him think that!”

Natasha sighs, reaches forward and sits up to pat Bucky on the shoulder. “It will be okay,” she repeats. “He won’t think you stole from him, that’s ridiculous. And besides, if you meet up it will be easy to give the money back.”

“But I don’t want to involve money,” Bucky says anxiously. “Money and dates don’t mix! Not until we’ve negotiated that, at least. What if he thinks I only want to meet him to give back the money? What do we do?”

Natasha flops backwards and groans. This was going to be a long afternoon.

~*~

Sam was having an unusually productive day. There was nothing wrong with that, of course; but there was something wrong with noticing it, and commenting on it, even internally, because of course as soon as he does so his day is derailed completely.

“Sam,” one Steven Grant Rogers says, leaning into the back room, in that way that means he’s about to show what an utter disaster he is. “Sam, help.”

“What is it?” Sam asks, automatically on edge from the tone in Steve’s voice.

“I gave the wrong change to a customer,” Steve says, wringing his hands. Sam frowns.

“How much?” he asks sceptically. Neither of them are _rich_ -rich, but they’re both doing okay; they’re well off enough that paying back a few bucks won’t hurt them, and Peggy is pretty much the most understanding business owner Sam has ever met to boot – it must be bad if it has Steve this worked up.

“Twenty dollars,” Steve says. Sam frowns disbelievingly, because they’ve both definitely made mistakes bigger than that and paid it off without much fuss, and Steve groans, wringing his hands even harder. “But he was _nice_ , Sam!”

“What, so that means he can make off with twenty dollars?” Sam asks indignantly. Steve blushes, that out-of-control blotchiness spreading down his cheeks and neck, and Sam _gets_ it. “Oh,” he says knowingly. Steve blushes harder. “ _Oh_.”

“Stop it,” Steve mumbles, so tongue-tied that he sounds like he’s talking around a mouthful of cotton.

“Who was he?” Sam asks gleefully. “Did I see him?” He’s been in the back room all day counting new stock, so it’s pretty unlikely, but a guy can hope.

“I don’t know,” Steve mumbles. “I hope not.”

“You’re no fun,” Sam accuses, but he can’t quite tamp down on the smile tugging at his lips. “What did he look like?”

“I’m not answering that!” Steve protests. It’s probably for the best, because Steve is terrible at describing people he likes; he leans very hard into poetry, and that isn’t a good thing for anyone, least of all the person being described.

“At least tell me the basics,” Sam says anyway, because he’s willing to put up with bad poetry if it’ll give him an idea of Steve’s new crush. “What was he in here for?”

“Indoor gardening,” Steve says. “He’s a beginner. He and his flatmate want to try growing some of their own herbs. He was _so_ – Sam, I don’t even know. He was just so soft? And so gentle with the plants, and – why am I still talking, shut me up –”

“No, this is fun,” Sam says. Steve swats him.

“He was just _nice_. I want to see him again. I almost wrote my number on the back of his receipt, but that feels – that feels weird. I only just met him.”

“You get numbers on your Starbucks cups all the time,” Sam says, deadpan, and Steve blushes even harder at the reminder. It’s honestly a little remarkable how many baristas seem to want to bone Steve, but a lot of that probably has to do with how often Steve gets a coffee just after his morning run, wearing those ridiculous shirts that threaten to burst at the seams every time he flexes.

“No, but – but this is different, I –” he flails. “I mean – I don’t know what I mean.”

“Fine,” Sam sighs. “So next time he comes in you just ask him on a date.”

“And _then_ what? Ask him for twenty dollars? What if he only agrees to meet me to pay me back? Or he might not ever come back, what then?”

“I think you’re overthinking this –”

“What if he turns out to be one of those assholes who think they’re entitled to money I gave them by accident?” Steve asks anxiously. “What if –”

“Oh my god,” Sam says, absolutely fascinated. Steve is just generally a bit of a disaster, it’s true, but he’s never more a disaster than when he’s fretting over a pretty boy.

“Shut _up_ ,” Steve moans.

“What did he buy?”

“Parsley, basil, rosemary, thyme,” Steve recites. “And half of our free pamphlets. And I gave him some recommendations for books on indoor gardening.”

“And twenty dollars,” Sam says ruthlessly. Steve groans and bangs his head down on the counter with a resounding thunk that makes Sam very glad that the shop is mostly empty.

“I can’t chase him for money,” Steve says intensely. “I _can’t_. I want to chase him, for – for a _date_ , for _coffee_ together. _Those things are mutually exclusive, Sam_.”

“Listen,” Sam says, with the full intention of putting on his therapist pants and telling Steve to stop fucking around, but the phone rings before he can impart this wisdom, cutting him off quite rudely.

Steve _jumps_. The phone rings ruthlessly on, and Steve just looks at it with all the wide-eyed fear that would make sense if the phone was a hissing snake.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Sam asks finally.

“If I answer it it’s going to be Bucky,” Steve says faintly. “Murphy’s law, Sam, I _know_ it.”

Sam rolls his eyes and picks up the phone. “Hi, Carter’s Garden Center, Sam speaking.”

“Hi, Sam,” a woman says on the other side of the line. “I’m Natasha, I wonder if you can help me.”

“Hi, _Natasha_ ,” Sam says, glaring a little at Steve, who shrugs unapologetically at him and starts heading towards the back room to leave Sam to the tender mercy of Natasha, who doesn’t sound terribly merciful. “How can we help?”

“Well, I have a bit of an unusual request,” Natasha says, slow and self-assured. “Not so much a request as, well – my friend James – he might have introduced himself as Bucky – came into the shop earlier and –”

“Sorry,” Sam says. It’s terrible manners to interrupt a customer and he knows it, but he needs to hear this said again. “Did you say Bucky?”

Steve whirls around, and the horrified look on his face is patently hilarious.

“I did,” Natasha says. “He’s just gotten home and realised that he got the wrong change –” She breaks off, and Sam is confused for a second before he hears the second, quieter voice in the background:

“No, Nat, I didn’t – I mean I _did_ , but we were talking, I was distracting him, it was my fault, tell him I was distracting Steve, _tell him_ –”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk. Do you want to make this a conference call?” Natasha snaps, one hand halfheartedly on the phone so that it doesn’t actually muffle her voice, and that at least makes James-Bucky shut up. “Sorry,” Natasha says, clearer again. “So James –”

“ _Bucky_ –”

“ _James_ was talking to your cashier and he thinks that there must have been some confusion, because he received twenty dollars more change than he should have –”

“What’s he saying?” Steve asks, as anxious as Sam’s ever seen him. “Sam, what’s he saying?”

“Tell him they can’t fire him!” James says from over the line. Sam is starting to get a headache.

“Natasha is saying,” he says, covering his own receiver. But only slightly, because he’d been able to hear Natasha’s conversation and it seems only fair to return the favour, “that her friend _James_ got twenty dollars more change out of you than he should have.”

“Oh fuck,” Steve mumbles, burying his face in his hands.

“We appreciate you calling to let us know,” Sam says into the phone, and he’s slightly surprised to find that he means it.

“Oh, it took a lot of emotional hand-wringing on our side, believe me,” Natasha says, darkly amused.

“ _Natasha_!” James hisses in the background, hilariously appalled. Sam thinks that maybe he and Steve do belong together after all.

“Well, I’ll let you in on a secret,” Sam says, “Steve here’s been pretty conflicted about what to do, too.”

“ _Sam_!” Steve squawks, and Natasha laughs through the other end of the phone, low and rich.

“Sounds like the two of them deserve each other,” she says.

“Sounds like it,” Sam agrees, and Steve forgets his former indignation to say, “What? What does it sound like? Sam, don’t hold out on me –!”

“Still,” Natasha says, “this begs the question of how to resolve this dilemma. James, you see, seems to have some philosophical opposition to giving the money to Steve when what he _really_ wants to give is –”

“Don’t you _dare_ finish that sentence!” James snaps, so loud that he comes through the speakers almost as clearly as Natasha. Sam snorts.

“Funnily enough,” he says, “Steve’s been fretting about trying to chase James for money, given that what _he_ really wants to chase is –”

“ _Sam_!” Steve yells again, definitely loud enough to be heard through the phone, and Natasha laughs.

“Well, we have a slight problem on our hands, then,” Natasha says. “We don’t have a car; we won’t make it to the shop before it closes.”

“No, that’s right,” Sam says, checking his watch. They close in twenty minutes, and they’re a little way out of the city. “Do you want to give me your number?” It’s only once the words are out of his mouth that he realises how they might be interpreted. “So we can arrange something, I mean.”

“Of course,” Natasha says smoothly, either oblivious enough – unlikely – or kind enough – likelier – to ignore Sam’s stumble. “Ready?” she asks, but despite that she doesn’t exactly wait before she starts rattling off numbers, and Sam has to lunge for the nearest pen and start scrawling on the countertop, snickering a little at what an asshole Natasha is.

“Sure,” Sam says, making sure to leak a little sarcasm into his tone. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Natasha says, as smug as the cat that got the cream. “Text me.”

The line goes dead, and Sam lowers the phone carefully back into its cradle. Steve is giving him a slightly speculative look.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” Steve says, in a way that is frankly infuriating. Sam should probably drop the subject, but he points at Steve instead, even as he fumbles for his phone and starts inputting Natasha’s number.

“You have absolutely no right to talk,” he says.

“Alright,” Steve says peaceably. Sam narrows his eyes. “I’ll start closing up,” Steve says, and promptly makes himself scarce. Sam stares after him suspiciously for a few minutes, but then his attention is pulled, almost inexorably, back to his phone. 

For a moment he wonders what to send, but after barely a few seconds he realises that the more he frets the more he is acting like Steve, and just fires off the first text that comes to mind: _texting texting one two three_?

Natasha replies almost immediately: _Funny_. And then a few seconds later she adds, _How do you feel about dragging James and Steve into a date_?

Sam chuckles, and then checks over his shoulder; Steve is by the door fending off a customer. _I feel very positively about that_ , he replies. _We’re closing up now, i’ll ttyl_

He puts the phone down to get back to the backroom, but not before a last message comes onto his screen: _Sure thing_ , accompanied by a _;)_

~*~

“It’ll be fine, you big baby,” Nat scolds Bucky, who is moping near the doorway. “Sam’s going to be the one to collect your money, and it is only fair that you are the one to hand it over. And I’ll be with you, won’t I?”

“That’s what makes me nervous,” Bucky says, even as he pushes himself off the wall and follows Nat out of their apartment. Nat turns, puts a hand dramatically to her chest.

“Why James,” she says. “It almost sounds as though you don’t trust me.”

“I _don’t_ ,” Bucky snaps predictably. “ _And_ you’ve been texting him, I know you have. And anyone who makes you grin like you’ve been grinning at your phone for the past few days is not to be trusted either. Together the two of you are doubly untrustworthy.”

“That’s quite rude,” Natasha says. “Of course I’m texting him. I have to set up the meeting, don’t I?”

It’d turned out that Sam lives in the city proper, and has managed to line up his shifts to finagle a day off; Nat and Bucky are going to be able to catch the subway for a few stops and meet him instead of going half an hour out of the city. Bucky has a twenty – the same twenty that had caused this entire mess – tucked neatly into his pocket.

“Setting up meetings should not make you so gleeful, Natka,” Bucky tells her. Natasha scoffs, and Bucky goes back to his phone, studiously avoiding everyone else on the street and on the subway.

Nat and Bucky are slightly late to the meeting, but that is by design; if Sam and Steve had arrived later Steve may have made a break for it, whereas Bucky would be forced to go through with the interaction by virtue of being the one who had to hand over the money.

Sure enough, Bucky stiffens and turns to Natasha with utter betrayal in his eyes when he sees Steve seated at a booth next to another man who is presumably the Sam that Natasha has been texting.

“What?” Natasha asks.

“You _said_ that Sam was going to be the one to collect my money! You _promised_ it wouldn’t be Steve!”

“I never said that specifically,” Nat says, with all the dignity she can muster. “And it won’t,” she adds, dragging the two of them forward. “Just give the bloody money to Sam and Steve doesn’t have to have anything to do with it.”

“I hate you,” Bucky hisses, even though he moves forward easily enough.

“Of course,” Natasha says, and presses him into the booth so that he is next to the wall and she is between him and freedom. Sam appears to have used the same technique against a rapidly-purpling Steve, and he grins at her conspiratorially. “James,” Nat says. “I believe you have something to return to the team at Carter’s Garden Center?”

Bucky pulls the twenty dollar bill out of his pocket and slides it across the table to Sam, glaring at her all the while.

“Perfect,” Sam says, pocketing it. “Now that that’s over – Natasha, can I buy you a drink?”

Nat blinks for a second; they’d agreed to make themselves scarce so that their respective disasters could figure themselves – and hopefully each other – out, and this was the easiest way to do that, and yet somehow – it isn’t what she’d expected. And she hadn’t expected to want to say yes, either.

It made sense, in retrospect; it’d been fun to arrange this, and of course some of that was due to the prospect of dragging two idiots together, but in hindsight the rest of it was Sam, and how fun he’d been to text. How much they’d been on the same wavelength.

“I’d love to,” she says, offering a hand, and hopes he understands the sincerity behind the words. From the smile on his face as he takes it, she thinks he does.

~*~

“Would you have come to the nursery again?” is the first thing that Steve blurts out when Natasha and Sam – that _liar_ – leave the table. Because he really is the disaster that Sam likes to accuse him of being, sometimes. Especially around pretty men, and Bucky is the _prettiest_ of men.

“I – yes, of course!” Bucky says, a little indignant. “I mean – Natasha wants dill. And garlic and potatoes, so I would’ve – and I would have paid back the twenty dollars!”

“I know you would have!” Steve exclaims, and prays that he’s not blushing, because that’s not what he’d wanted to say at all. “I know that, I didn’t think you weren’t going to, but – well.”

“Well,” Bucky echoes. “It just felt – weird.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “I guess I should apologise –” he starts, but Bucky waves him off before he can.

“I should’ve checked the change before letting you stick it in my bag,” he says.

“You don’t have to worry about it now, though,” Steve says, quiet.

“No,” Bucky says thoughtfully. “I guess we don’t.”

The two of them sit and stare at each other for a few moments longer, a little bit awkward and a little bit shy, and Steve sneaks a look at Sam and Natasha, who seem to have found another table and a pot of coffee to share, and look to be having the time of their lives. He thinks of Sam’s casual offer, and its easy acceptance, and breathes in, lets coffee-scented courage saturate his lungs.

“I just mean – I wanted to see you again,” he says.

“We don’t have the space for potatoes,” Bucky says, in the tone of a confession. “Or even dill and garlic, really.”

Steve grins at him, and Bucky grins right back. He’s beautiful when he smiles, and Steve can feel his heart skip a beat.

“You don’t owe us any more money,” he says, “but, well – maybe I could owe you a coffee, since we’re here.”

Bucky ducks his head, peers out at Steve from under long hair. “Let’s not owe each other anything,” he says. “I’d be glad to just have a drink with you.”

“No strings attached?”

“No _monetary_ strings,” Bucky says, and rakes his eyes over Steve, who feels himself start blushing at the implications in Bucky’s sharp blue gaze even as he grins widely, offers him a hand.

“It’s a date,” he says, and those three words might be the hardest he’s ever forced out of his shy mouth but all he can think is that it’s _worth it_ as Bucky leans forward and shakes on it.

**Author's Note:**

> was natasha watching the untouchables or battleship potemkin? you decide 
> 
> fun fact: the premise is based entirely on a true story wherein my brother went to grab three pizzas and returned with four and then realised at home that he’d only paid five dollars for everything. there was much emotional hand-wringing over what to do before we finally put on our adult pants and called the pizza place


End file.
